Send us a text

A fake contractor calls the help desk, a password gets reset, and suddenly a national retailer has hackers inside. We open the door on the human side of hacking—how believable stories and helpful habits become the first domino—then trace the technical steps that turn a small foothold into a system‑wide crisis.

We walk through the anatomy of the Marks & Spencer breach: social engineering as the entry point, slow‑burn privilege escalation, and the moment attackers reached the Active Directory—the store of who can do what. From there, it’s a short hop to ransomware detonation and double extortion, where every machine is unusable and stolen customer data adds pressure to pay. Along the way, we translate hashing, brute force, and admin access into plain English, and we talk candidly about what detection looks like when it actually works: least privilege that’s enforced, behavioural alerts that catch odd access patterns, and teams empowered to say no.

The hardest lesson lands in recovery. Backups that live on the same network get encrypted or deleted; backups that are never rehearsed don’t restore on time. We break down air‑gapped, immutable backups, how to test restores, and why a clean rebuild is sometimes the only safe path. We also connect this case to higher‑stakes incidents at pipelines and hospitals, showing why attackers chase critical bottlenecks and how zero‑trust identity, MFA, network segmentation, and vendor risk controls blunt that leverage. It’s a story about culture as much as code: small process choices—like verifying contractors—change outcomes.

If this breakdown sharpened your thinking, follow the show, leave a quick review, and share it with a teammate who owns identity, help desk, or backups. Your support gets us to series two—and might just get Hannah to Melbourne.

Like, Subscribe, and Follow the Tech Overflow Podcast by visiting this link: https://linktr.ee/Techoverflowpodcast